Monthly archives "November 2012"

We welcome three new collection points this week. Govinda’s Natural Food Cafe in Rondebosch, Lady Bonin’s Tea Parlour in Woodstock and Planet Kids in Muizenberg.

All details are on the website – remember that if your current collection point is closed, or you want to choose a more convenient one, you can change your default collection point by going to “Change details” after logging in.

GMO update from around the World
I wrote a few weeks ago about the good news regarding genetically-modified crops from around the world, including in South Africa. Unfortunately California’s Proposition 37, legislation to enforce mandatory labelling of genetically-modified products, narrowly failed to pass after massive funding by food and chemical giants such as Monsanto, Nestle, Pepsi, Coke and Kelloggs swamped media with a misinformation campaign about fears of increased food prices and the effects on the poor of the proposed legislation.

Better news from Peru is that Peru’s new government, with a real focus on alleviating poverty, has imposed a ten-year ban on GMO’s, with support from local farmers and much of the population. Peru has a growing organic sector, and is becoming more aware of and wants to protect its tremendous biodiversity of highly nutritious foods. Quinoa and amaranth, two high-protein grains, were relatively unheard of a few years ago, and considered poor man’s food in Peru, but are now widely recognised for their high protein content. Newer foods such as maca, lacuma and camu camu, unheard of a few years ago, are now increasingly common as their unique nutritional benefits become more well-known. Maca, an Incan staple, was almost extinct n Peru, until the growing focus of local foods brought it into the mainstream and onto the fields, while camu camu, a fruit high in Vitamin C, is now commonly found in sours in bars throughout the country.

Kefir and folic acid
You may have noticed we’ve been offering kefir the last few weeks. Kefir is a dairy product similar to yoghurt, and a powerful probiotic. It is cultivated from the starter kefir grains, a combination of bacteria and yeasts. It is extremely high in the live bacteria beneficial for the digestive system, and is more easily tolerated than most dairy, as much of the difficult-to-digest lactose has already been consumed by the bacteria. It usually has a slightly more sour taste than yoghurt.

Kefir also contains high levels of folic acid – the more ripe, or sour the taste, the more folic acid. Folic acid is critical for all sorts of reasons, including growth and cell division, and therefore for children and for pregnant moms.

Folic acid is also found in leafy greens. Although commonly added to vitamin supplements, or breakfast cereals (where it’s splashed across the box, underplaying the refined grain and sugar that make up most of the cereal), supplemented folic acid isn’t absorbed to nearly the same degree as from a live food source.

Highs and lows
Organic farms are living entities, and they too have high and low energy moments. The sudden heat last week impacted some of the produce, and it’s often difficult for farmers to estimate availability when it can be suddenly hot and then suddenly raining. Almost all of the fresh produce you’re buying is still sitting in a field somewhere, so there’s no guarantee it will make it to your box.

Remember, if you’re ever unhappy with any of your order, please contact us for a refund. We receive most of the fresh produce on Wednesday evening, and it goes straight into the boxes, so we usually only quality check the batch, not each product. Feedback helps us to work with the farmer to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Listen to your body
This week’s video features Naturally Organic’s Skye on his vision for healthy and sustainable food. You can view it here.

Connectivity hassles
Many people are reporting connectivity problems today, perhaps due to the infrastructure upgrades in progress. Please make sure that your order confirmation page loads and correctly reflects your full order, and that you receive an order confirmation email. If the confirmation page and email don’t arrive correctly, it means we didn’t receive the order you intended to place.

Dragonfly Farm Goat’s Cheese
There’s very limited stock of our Dragonfly goat’s cheese left this week, as the new baby goats rightfully get the lion’s share, so get your orders in quickly.